Take me down to Paradise City
Where the drivers are mean and the cars are pretty
Gonna take... you... down!

It seems like a long, long time ago when the original Burnout blazed onto the racing scene, smashing the competition aside to offer something truly different and revolutionary in the form of its crashing features - and indeed, it has been a while. Over the years various elements have been added, removed, tinkered with and refined, but some have complained that nothing has really changed that much from one iteration to the next. While I'd strongly disagree with that statement, especially given how stunning Burnout: Revenge looked and how much fun it was to play, both online and off, I'll concede that it has been more evolution than revolution - but all that changes with Burnout Paradise, which revolutionises the racing genre just like the original did and, from this game forth, things will never be the same again.

Lately I've been practically living in Paradise City - it's just such a fun, varied, beautiful place to go that I was thinking of purchasing a little apartment on the waterfront and moving in. As long as I've got a good view of the beach, so I can see all the drivers racing up and down it, speeding up ramps and barrel rolling through the air, I'll be happy. And of course if I need to know what's going on around the city, I only need to tune into D.J. Atomika - just like D.J. Striker before him in Burnout 3: Takedown, he's full of helpful hints, fun suggestions and amusing anecdotes, keeping you company on the airwaves as you listen to the great selection of licensed tracks or your own playlist from your hard drive. Or you can skip straight to the second half of Paradise's own playlist, which features a range of original music from the first Burnout right through to Revenge - from the overly dramatic themes to the peppy, upbeat dance music, I was in nostalgia heaven, wistfully recalling the good old days as I enjoyed all the wonder of the present.

There's only one loading break in Burnout Paradise - and that occurs when you first enter the game. After that, it's plain sailing all the way - no loading screens to look at, no cumbersome menus full of challenges and modes to navigate, just pure, unadulterated gaming bliss. Wait - what? No menus?! Then how the hell do you access all that the game has to offer, I hear you ask (I have excellent hearing!) Well, that's just one of the reasons why Paradise has just started a racing revolution - and the answer might surprise you.

Paradise City is where Burnout Paradise takes place. It's a huge, sprawling metropolis complete with sparsely populated surroundings, with more variety in its scenery and layout than any racing game you've ever come across. Split into five large districts, the main city itself features busy streets with plenty of traffic to dodge (or slam into) that varies in theme as you travel around it, two sides of it on the coast where you can speed along the beach, or through the harbour where you can actually board ships. Head out into the countryside and you'll find roads that wind through the mountains and such delights as the airport and quarry to explore, packed with ramps and jumps. All of this looks absolutely stunning too - the graphics are eye-wateringly sumptuous and the constant sunshine with gleaming road glare in places makes it a really cheerful, fun place to hang out. The attention to detail on every roadside object from parked cars to streetlamps and benches to signs and shops and much, much more is very impressive, even more so when you're going unbelievably fast and it's all speeding by seamlessly, with no hint whatsoever of any slowdown, the angry honks of the drivers and the whoosh as you pass by fading into the distance in an instant, to great stereo effect. From the ranch to the wind farm to the observatory to the waterfront to the mountainside railroad and more, the only thing that's more staggering than the variation in your surroundings is the way it's all laid out.

Simply put, there is not a single dull road in the whole of Paradise City (and there are dozens and dozens of roads and streets to drive along). Every single street features back alleys to explore, or billboards to smash through, or jumps to make, or all of the above. There are countless shortcuts throughout the city and its surrounding countryside that will see you powering through alleyways, leaping across broken bridges, smashing through barriers, speeding along abandoned railroads and even launching from one clifftop track to the next, your heart skipping a beat as the blistering speed makes split second reactions a necessity. Never will you find yourself bored - if you're not dodging traffic then you're looking for that next hidden shortcut or super jump, which are scattered liberally around the city. There are fifty super jumps, one hundred and twenty billboards and four hundred barriers to discover, and the handy discovery screen (it's not a menu, it's an information screen!) allow you to track how many of these you've discovered and how many are left in the five city districts. Finding every shortcut, smashing every billboard and discovering and successfully landing every super jump is a massive task and one that will last for hours on end as you speed around the place.

However, these are just the side attractions - the main meat of the single player experience comes in the form of the events, which is where the true ingenuity of Paradise's system lies. Most of the junctions you drive through feature an event, and to start an event you simply stop at the traffic lights and spin your wheels by holding the left and right triggers. It's that simple! No fuss, no menus, just drive to the nearest event you fancy competing in, rev your engine and begin! Of course the races return, although there are no laps to complete this time around and not even any checkpoints - you've simply got a start and a finish point and you can get there any which way you please, using either speed, shortcuts or sheer aggression to win the day.

This is a double edged sword however - while in the past barriers prevented you from straying off course, here you've got to keep an eye on the ever present and vital mini-map in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, something that's very hard to do when you're speeding along at over one hundred miles an hour, dodging traffic while trying to take down your opponents to get a decent lead and increase your boost bar. It can be very frustrating in races and the burning routes in particular that there is no restarting an event - if you screw up near the start and know you're going to lose, you still have to reach the finish line and then drive all the way back to the starting junction if you want to have another go, the one downside to this new system. However, the fact is that you can complete the events in any order, so if you mess up one then you can just pick another nearby junction instead.

Fortunately, the heads up display once again comes to your rescue when it comes to navigating the maze of roads - the name of the current street you are on is shown at the top of the screen, with the names of upcoming streets on the left and right. When you need to make a turn you hear the ticking of a car indicator and the left or right street name flashes, clearly showing that you need to make a turn. It takes a little getting used to and at first you'll lose plenty of races just from missing a turning or taking a shortcut that leads you in completely the wrong direction, but as you get used to the gameplay you'll soon learn to slow down for the turns and keep your eye on the display and the map, as well as co-ordinating the very challenging task of staying on course without smashing into those pesky road users.

As well as the many races, the road rage events return, which have no limits whatsoever - you just start at the road rage event's junction and then you can go anywhere you like as you take out a target number of drivers within a time limit without trashing your vehicle. This is another area where the beauty of this freeform driving experience comes into play - if you wreck your car a couple of times and get the damage critical warning, which means you can't crash again without ending the event, you can simply slow down and drive to the nearest garage for an instant repair to get back up to full health! The nearest garage is always shown on your mini-map during events where you can get damage critical, and they are dotted around the whole map so you're never more than a mile or two away from one. And thankfully the annoying time limits of Revenge are gone, meaning that you have three or more minutes to complete the event and you get an extra five seconds per takedown - when you're on a roll you can go on pretty much indefinitely and will almost certainly wreck out before you run out of time.

Burning laps return in the form of burning routes, each of which require a specific car to complete and reward you by unlocking a better version of the car you complete them with. There are seventy-five cars to discover in total, with some available for downloading online and others rewarded for upgrading your license by completing events. Every vehicle looks fantastic, and as with many aspects of racing, Burnout turns this on its head by making the cars look better when they're wrecked! The slow motion crash scenes, which occur whenever you crash your vehicle, are spectacular, as you watch your windows shatter and your car's whole body crumple and rip, doors flying open and tyres and pieces of bodywork flying off. There's less flying shrapnel than in previous Burnout games however, which makes crashes look slightly less impressive than before, yet the effects are technically superior.

The cars this time around are split into three categories, making for more variety than ever before. Aggression cars have better strength and are bulkier to handle, granting you an extended boost bar for takedowns and reducing your bar when you get taken down. Stunt cars have boost bars that fill up fastest when you're performing stunts like jumps, barrel rolls (turn your car sideways, upside down and then back upright to land), flatspins (spin your car around while remaining upright), drift, and smashing through barriers and billboards. They generally have decent, responsive handling but aren't as tough as the aggression class.

Finally come the Speed cars, and these are not for the faint of heart! Driving dangerously (driving into oncoming traffic, near misses with other cars, traffic checking vehicles from behind, performing jumps and so on) fills your boost bar, but then once you begin boosting, if you stop you can't boost again until you fill up your meter (unlike the other classes, where you just use up boost as and when you like). This basically encourages you to put your finger on the boost and keep it there until your meter runs out, while deliberately driving dangerously, because if you perform enough stunts while boosting you get a Burnout and the bar refills - do this again and you've begun a Burnout chain! Yes folks, burnout chaining makes a triumphant return and you will go at speeds that are beyond insane as you chain your way around the city, where a mixture of looking ahead, split second reactions, skill, luck and prayer will all be needed to keep you from ploughing into an oncoming bus or smashing into that wall you just didn't see coming.

Speed cars are by far the most difficult class to use successfully - I personally prefer to stick with a Stunt car for general exploring and Aggression cars for races, road rage and Marked Man, a new event type that challenges you to get from the start point to the finish point while a number of heavy duty AI vehicles chase you down and ram you, attempting to take you down enough times to trash your car before you can escape. A fun and challenging mode, the AI here is fantastic and a balance of skill, dodging, aggression and guts are needed to see you through. Finally comes the Stunt event, where you must achieve enough points for performing stunts. Drift, boost, air time and more earn you points, while super jumps, billboard smashes, flatspins and barrel rolls earn you vital multipliers, and you have a time limit to achieve a score, although mercifully when time runs out you can keep going until your combo ends (you have a few seconds grace between stunts) or you crash.

Notice that I said finally there, because - and this is just tragic - the crash junctions have been removed, as have the traffic checking events and aftertouch. While traffic checking was throwaway fun but nothing special, the aftertouch facility is sorely missed (steering your flying car after you crash to cause carnage and maybe even get a takedown on an approaching racer) and the crash junctions have been a staple of the series for a long time now; the strategy of launching your car into a busy junction in order to cause the biggest accident possible was always such tremendous fun. I doubt that anyone in their right mind would have removed the crash junctions for the sake of it, so I can only guess that the technical issues of having a constant, real-time, well populated city with no load breaks caused a problem. Sadly, the replacement for crash junctions is 'Showtime' and while fun to a degree, it's just so silly that it takes away from the relative realism of the rest of the game.

There are two modes of Showtime to activate - racing and crashing. Racing allows you to attempt to beat the current offline or online speed record for any road you're driving along (but you must enter the road at one end or the other), while with crashing you simply hit the left and right bumpers at any time and off you go - your car flips into the air and then you bounce along the road, veering into oncoming traffic as the vehicles ahead of you desperately try to swerve out of the way. You get points for smashing into cars, multipliers for hitting buses and more points for the distance you travel, and if you play it well you can bounce halfway around the city, your boost bar refilling as you hit vehicles and emptying as you hit A in rhythm with impacts in the road to bounce higher and faster. It is fun in short bursts and there is some strategy involved in keeping up a long combo, but it's just no patch on crash junctions and without doubt the worst change in Paradise.

As you drive around the city, completing events to upgrade your license (at which points the events reset and you can complete any selection again to reach your next license), various cars can be discovered tearing along at breakneck speed - when you notice someone else driving like a maniac, you can chase them and take them down to add the car to your junkyard. Yes, you read that right - no garage for you! This is Burnout after all, what did you expect? Pimp my wreck? There are five junkyards in the city and if you want to change your car you simply drive to the nearest junkyard and select your new vehicle. If you want to change the paint job then you can do so by driving to a drive-through sprayer, while speeding through a gas station instantly refills your boost bar. There are also parking garages to discover that give you access to rooftop ramps to find new shortcuts and smash billboards that you couldn't for the life of you figure out how to reach.

Probably the most impressive feature of all though is the way the online mode works - rather than separating itself from the main game, you simply hit right on the D-pad to access an on-screen mini-menu that appears as you continue to play. From here you can invite friends, find a quick match, browse the rooms on offer or start your own game. But here's the really cool part - there are no lobbies! When you join a game you simply leap into the host's city in the same location as you were while offline, and the same goes if you start a game yourself. Then you're in and can drive around on your own and attempt to set records in the room for the best oncoming, drift, air time, jump distance, flatspin, power parking (handbrake turn in between cars!), barrel rolls and so on, or continue exploring to find hidden shortcuts and billboards, or seek out other drivers to ram into, while you wait for an event or challenge to begin. This system is so new, fresh and revolutionary that the first time I tried it I simply couldn't get over it. No lobbies, no waiting, no fuss, no interruption and no loading, other than the initial connection to EA's servers! Unbelievable!

It's such a crying shame then that the online mode isn't quite as diverse as I was hoping for. The sad thing is, there are no crash junctions to compete on, no team road rage and no marked man events to enjoy. In fact, the only event type on offer is the race, and while the options to create a race are very diverse, allowing you to define your own multiple checkpoints or use one of the many set routes across a series of rounds where you accumulate points for your finishing position, it doesn't change what a terrible waste it is that you can't partake in crash junctions and team road rage with other players. With Paradise City also recalling fond memories of online classic Midtown Madness 3 (where by complete chance I first met one of our best reviewers and one of my best friends, Christopher Martin!) it's also a crying shame that such classics as Stayaway (one player is 'it' and all the others must ram him), Tag (one player is 'it' and must ram someone else so that they become 'it'), Hunter (one player is a cop and must ram the other players to turn them into cops until everyone is a cop) and Capture the Gold (gold appears and must be driven into and then taken to a checkpoint, ram the player with the gold to steal it) weren't plundered and incorporated into Burnout Paradise. Seriously, when I think of the squandered online potential of gaming's greatest ever racing playground, it makes me want to weep.

However, I don't want to sound overly negative, because as well as the racing there are 350 (yes, count them!) challenges to complete, fifty challenges for every combination of players from two through to eight. Some are simple like getting one hundred yards of drift or boosting for ten seconds, others are trickier like landing a tough jump while barrel rolling or smashing four billboards. The best part about these challenges however is that it introduces a brand new concept: co-op racing. Each challenge requires every player to contribute and while some require you to each reach a goal, others are true team efforts, like getting 10,000 yards of drift between the whole group, or having one player leap over the other seven at a certain location.

As simple as some of these challenges are, the spirit of fun and co-operation as you drive around the city to different places to pull off stunts together, taking each other down along the way, is like no other game. It encourages players to chat and lark around together, as well as leading them to discover hidden routes or billboards they're having a hard time taking out. Funniest of all though is the Xbox Vision function - plug your camera in and when you get taken down, a snapshot of your face is sent to the opposing player! I've had so much fun pulling daft faces for Chris and displaying my... assortment of toys like Cartman, Mr. Hankie, Ren & Stimpy, Gollum, and of course my Master Chief helmet - this feature is true innovation and a really, really good laugh. And admit it, you've got a dirty mind because you thought I was going to say that I was displaying something else - didn't you! Thankfully I've not yet seen any body parts other than an upright middle finger, and hopefully that trauma will never happen (although any hot female gamers are welcome to flash me!!)

There's plenty more I could say about Burnout Paradise, but as usual I've rambled on for far too long - so thanks if you've managed to stick with me to the end of this and my other epic length reviews! I'll end by saying this: Burnout Paradise is the most innovative racing game to come out in a very long time, possibly ever. A fully conceived, brilliantly designed, incredibly gorgeous and intricately varied city is yours to roam around at leisure, discovering shortcuts, taking down billboards and landing super jumps, shutting down rival vehicles to own them, revving your engine at junctions to enter a range of challenging events and hopping online for furious racing and co-op challenges with friends and strangers alike, all at the push of a button. This is a true revolution - and it's only the lack of event types online and the tragic loss of those wonderful crash junctions that stops me from giving Paradise the 10/10 that it arguably deserves; I just hope Criterion rectify these omissions next time, something that I'm already very excited about. For now though, I can see myself staying in Paradise City for many months to come, so drop in for a visit sometime - you might just want to stay too!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).